Remember your first day in kindergarten; high school; college? The excitement and fear! Well for our international students, the new semester has commenced ! All over the area, thousands are pouring onto campuses navigating classes, offices, bathrooms – all while wrestling with the emotions of culture shock and anxiety that come with being in a new country. Our ministries across the country are trying various outreaches to meet students and let them know about our movements. What a moment for the gospel to shine!

For Stevens Institute of Technology, we organized our 40 Day Prayer Calendar for a new semester. I can’t stress how important prayer is. We believe we have seen such encouraging fruit from the last few years because of our commitment to prayer and surrender to our great God. There is absolutely no effort, no human strength and no amount of money that could accomplish what God wants to accomplish through the power of his might. And it is through prayer that we are trusting Christ to accomplish his good work for us this semester !

Of course we have to plan as well, and on Sunday August 24th,  we gathered over 20 volunteers, core students and staff to pray and plan for a new semester together. It was an uplifting time for fellowship, dinner, prayer, dreaming and planning for the semester. 

I want to pause and praise the Lord for this team – without it we absolutely could not do the work. Although we have dozens of churches and perhaps hundreds of believers joining us in prayer from a distance, this team of on-the-ground volunteers and student leaders who regularly show up to be the hands and feet of Jesus really make things work. 

This semester, we have 6 churches who have committed to being in the rotation of churches that bring food and volunteers to our large gatherings on Fridays to feed and share the gospel with dozens of non-believers from around the world. Trays upon trays of food; smiles upon smiles to serve! They are the ones volunteering to drive for our field trips and stay late for cleanups. They are befriending and helping students in a myriad of other ways as well–offering more intimate Bible studies or helping with driving lessons or ESL. Many are opening up their homes for our monthly homes groups or advocating for our ministry before their church congregations. We are so thankful for our “volunteer missionaries” who have caught the vision of reaching the world through international students.

Please pray for us as we kick things off. For the last weeks in August, we are on campus daily to distribute flyers and personally meet and invite students to our gatherings. We have our campus club fair on September 4th and our major kickoff picnic on September 6th. Our biggest prayer is that we would get over 100 students at our first large group weekly meeting on September 12th. This is of course where they will hear the gospel and decide to stick around for subsequent Friday dinners. 

Thank you so much for your partnership in Christ. Keep praying for a great harvest of souls. Pray the Spirit empowers and leads. May God be glorified!